The cover of this album, drawn by Syd Barrett himself, is of insects. It is a subtle tribute to the beatles, as they are all beetles.
Like the Beatles, Syd often writes very childish lyrics and simple, straightforward love songs. However, there the similarity ends. As experimental as the Beatles ... Read review
Syd Barrett's second solo album seems more "together" than its predecessor but in fact its ... more
author was increasingly losing the plot. "Baby Lemonade" and "Dominoes" have some of the old winsome English psychedelic sparkle about them but mostly these trac...
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Syd Barrett's second solo album seems more "together" than its predecessor but in fact its ... more
author was increasingly losing the plot. "Baby Lemonade" and "Dominoes" have some of the old winsome English psychedelic sparkle about them but mostly these trac...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Syd Barrett's second solo album seems more "together" than its predecessor but in fact its ... more
author was increasingly losing the plot. "Baby Lemonade" and "Dominoes" have some of the old winsome English psychedelic sparkle about them but mostly these trac...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Syd Barrett's second solo album seems more "together" than its predecessor but in fact its ... more
author was increasingly losing the plot. "Baby Lemonade" and "Dominoes" have some of the old winsome English psychedelic sparkle about them but mostly these trac...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Syd Barrett's second solo album seems more "together" than its predecessor but in fact its ... more
author was increasingly losing the plot. "Baby Lemonade" and "Dominoes" have some of the old winsome English psychedelic sparkle about them but mostly these trac...
Postage & Packaging: £1.21 Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Syd Barrett's second solo album seems more "together" than its predecessor but in fact its ... more
author was increasingly losing the plot. "Baby Lemonade" and "Dominoes" have some of the old winsome English psychedelic sparkle about them but mostly these trac...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Syd Barrett's second solo album seems more "together" than its predecessor but in fact its ... more
author was increasingly losing the plot. "Baby Lemonade" and "Dominoes" have some of the old winsome English psychedelic sparkle about them but mostly these tracks proceed at a busking plod. In retrospect, Barrett seems remote from what's going on, whereas on The Madcap Laughed he was still fighting for vitality. Producer David Gilmour once again had to work hard to elicit material from him. The CD version of this album contains out takes which will prove morbidly fascinating for Barrett aficionadoes, as he fluffs and misses his lines. This was his last ever recorded album before he retreated into the cocoon of Cambridge suburbia where he lives today, his shell and madcap spell broken. He remained, however, an icon to every fey and tousled left-field popster from Marc Bolan to Blur's Damon Albarn. --David Stubbs
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Advantages: A wistful and highly original album. Very poignant. Disadvantages: Not most people's cup of tea. Depressing.
...this album, drawn by Syd Barrett himself, is of insects. It is a subtle tribute to the beatles, as they are all beetles.
Like the Beatles, Syd often writes very childish lyrics and simple, straightforward love songs. However, there the similarity ends. As experimental as the Beatles were at the time, they cannot match Syd for sheer experimentation and audacity. He was the mainstay of early Pink Floyd and wrote their completely wonderful debut ... ...Barrett is a much more mournful record. It was made shortly after he left the Floyd, due to mental illness. The album is one of the few glimpses we have in music of someone going over the edge.
However, Syd still retains his poetry and mastery of lyrics, even if the confidence which propelled him to stardom had gone.
The first track is "Baby Lemonade":
In the evening sun going down
When the earth ... more
The cover of this album, drawn by Syd Barrett himself, is of insects. It is a subtle tribute to the beatles, as they are all beetles. Like the Beatles, Syd often writes very childish lyrics and simple, straightforward love songs. However, there the similarity ends. As experimental as the Beatles were at the time, they cannot match Syd for sheer experimentation and audacity. He was the mainstay of early Pink Floyd and wrote their completely wonderful debut album Piper At The Gates of Dawn.
Barrett is a much more mournful record. It was made shortly after he left the Floyd, due to mental illness. The album is one of the few glimpses we have in music of someone going over the edge. However, Syd still retains his poetry and mastery of lyrics, even if the confidence which propelled him to stardom had gone.
The first track is "Baby Lemonade":
In the evening sun going down When the earth streams in, in the morning Send a cage through the post, Make your name like a ghost. Please, please, Baby Lemonade
I'm screaming, I met you this way You're nice to me like ice. In the clock they sent through a washing machine Come around, make it soon, so alone... Please, please, Baby Lemonade.
Here you get the sense of the way he employs bizarre word associations. The song comes over as trying to be an ordinary, sixties pop song, but it is fractured and has its own fragile beauty.
This is accompanied by an instrumental overdubbed over Syd's lyrics and produced by David Gilmour, ironically Syd's replacement with the Floyd. The backing band do some justice to Syd's ideas, but ultimately the album is not as powerful as Opel, an album of outtakes from the recording sessions which produced The Madcap Laughs and Barrett. However, the official albums are more accessible and less raw than Opel and some people may prefer them.
The next track "Love Song" is ostensibly a simple love song, but it contains the same dark undercurrents which pervade all of Syd's work.
Dominoes is an outstanding song, "You and I in place. Wasting time on dominoes. A day so dark, so warm. Life that comes of no harm." - a beautifully haunting melody celebrating the ordinary. Part of what makes Syd so unique is his ability to create strange scenes in the listener's mind, very ordinary, yet far removed from the everyday world.
It Is Obvious is one of the weaker songs, I think, yet there are still moments of intense poetry "mark the blanket where the sparrows play / and the trees by the waving corn stranded / my legs move the last empty inches to you / the softness, the warmth from the weather in suspense".
The next track "Rats" is excellent. The chorus is angry and spiky and full of sarcastic vitriol. "Rats, rats lay down flat! We don't need you, we act like that. And if you think you're un-loved, then we know about that . . . rats, rats, lay down flat! Yes, yes, yes, yes, lay down flat!".
By contrast, the verses employ a stream of consciousness technique, piling words and images on top of each other to create a densely textured soundscape: "Bam, spastic, tactile, engine, heaving, crackle, slinky, dormy, roofy, wham I'll have them, fried bloke, broken jardy, cardy, smoocho, moocho, paki, pufftle, sploshette, moxette, very smelly . . ."
Maisie is a very mournful ditty, sung in a very low range. It is not my favourite track on the album, yet it still creates a typically strange and haunting atmosphere.
Gigolo Aunt relieves this somewhat - a cheerful and completely mad song, as near as Syd gets to a conventional pop song on the album.
Waving My Arms in the Air returns to a more introspective feel - with some spoken passages, I think reflecting Syd's insecurities: "There will be shoulders pressing in the hall and I won't know if you're here at all there will be wine and drinking in the yard there won't be anybody very hard."
Wined and Dined is a wonderfully whimsical love song, which is very catchy. At the same time, however, it reads like a lament for a happy time that the singer has lost:
Wined and dined, oh it seemed just like a dream! Girl was so kind, kind of love I'd never seen. Only last summer, it's not so long ago... Just last summer, now massed winds blow...
Wolfpack and Effervescing Elephant, by contrast are pure products of Syd's childish and highly eccentric imagination. Wolfpack is sung in a screaming voice, and is truly atmospheric and chilling. Effervescing Elephant, by contrast, is charming, silly and hilariously funny:
An effervescing elephant With tiny eyes and great big trunk Once whispered to the tiny hairy ear of one inferior That by next June he'd die, oh yeah! Because the tiger would roam. The little one said: "Oh my goodness I must stay at home! And every time I hear a growl I'll know the tiger's on the prowl And I'll be really safe, you know The elephant he told me so."
It has a fantastic, jaunty rhythm and makes for a great way to round off the album, otherwise it would be overly dark.
Barrett is not for everybody, but it contains some truly outstanding and brutally honest lyrics.
Advantages: Brilliant example of innovative 60's music Disadvantages: Maybe a little dated for some and quite different from their later work.
Relics was originally released in 1971 in between "Meddle" and "Dark Side of the Moon" and features songs from the bands early years and some more obscure tracks from the period. The title jokingly reflects the choice of these older tracks.
The Tracks
Arnold Layne (SydBarrett)
Interstellar Overdrive (SydBarrett/Roger Waters/Richard Wright/Nick Mason)
See Emily Play (SydBarrett)
Remember A Day (Richard Wright)
Paintbox (Richard Wright)
Julia Dream (Roger Waters)
Careful With That Axe, Eugene (Roger Waters/Richard Wright/David Gilmour/Nick Mason)
Cirrus Minor (Roger Waters)
The Nile Song (Roger Waters)
Biding My Time (Roger Waters)
Bike (SydBarrett)
Pink Floyd originally consisted of SydBarrett (vocals, guitar), Richard Wright (keyboards, vocals), Roger Waters (bass ...
Advantages: A fantastic album Disadvantages: Only if you preferred Roger Waters in the band
The Division Bell is the second studio album recorded after Roger Waters left the Pink Floyd, its more commercial than their earlier offerings, but it stands up as one of the best, and pretty much signalled a return to form.
Background
OK, the story so far, Pink Floyd began their recording life in 1967, a quartet made up of Roger Waters, Rick Wright, Nick Mason, and SydBarrett, a year later SydBarrett became too unreliable and so for the group to survive, he was replaced by Dave Gilmore.
In 1979 Roger Waters had became far too arrogant, he virtually had the new album ready planned out, the songs written and brought them in to the studio merely for the band to perform, he also demanded that Rick Wright leave after the completion of the album - The Wall, otherwise he would not let the songs be used, and so Rick wright agreed ...
Advantages: A timeless classic in Rock Disadvantages: Acid rock may not appeal to all
for yourself. If you have The Wizard Of Oz, start Dark Side Of The Moon, after the Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer lion roars for the last time(I believe it roars 3 times, but I could be wrong.). Turn off the volume and you be the judge!
The members at the time were David Gilmour, Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Rick Wright. I think people will have to read for themselves about the missing member behind Floyd. See http://pinkfloydhyperbase.dk/who/b.htm. SydBarrett(Roger Keith Barrett) played a role and influence on Pink Floyd overall.
This album was recorded at Abbey Road Studios in 1973. Actually beween June 1972 and January 1973. It was produced by Pink Floyd, which may not mean much to some today, but is significant as far as Roger Waters is concerned. This ensures that Roger gets a cut whenever songs are used in concerts, or by other artists ...
Personnel: Syd Barrett (vocals, guitar); David Gilmour (guitar, organ, bass, drums); Vic Saywell (tuba); Richard Wright (piano, harmonium, organ); Jerry Shirley (drums, percussion). If THE MADCAP LAUGHS was Syd Barrett's attempt to pare down his songs into their basic components to reveal their inner workings, then BARRETT is the fruition of that process. While BARRETT is not a tremendous departure from what Barrett had been working on earlier, it seems to have benefited from Rick Wright taking Roger Waters' place alongside of David Gilmour in the producer's chair. (If Waters had trouble "getting" Barrett in the context of Floyd, then there was little chance of a sympathetic ear during the solo sessions.) Wright and Gilmour also accompany Barrett on much of the material. Their tasteful blend of murmured bass, harmonium, and piano nicely compliments Barrett's acoustic strumming and the album's slower pace and slightly darker mood, providing a counterpoint to Barrett's dislike of conventional song structure. From the seemingly paranoid free-association of "Rats" to the dirge "Maisie," Barrett seems to be channeling his wounded psyche directly on to the vinyl. But just when you think you've heard it all, Barrett surprises with the beautiful (and almost conventional) "Gigolo Aunt." The importance of the contributions that Syd Barrett--a man simultaneously years ahead and years behind the times--made to music are undeniable.
Titles on disc 1
1.
Baby Lemonade
2.
Love Song
3.
Dominoes
4.
It Is Obvious
5.
Rats
6.
Maisie
7.
Gigolo Aunt
8.
Waving My Arms In The Air
9.
I Never Lied To You
10.
Wined And Dined
11.
Wolfpack
12.
Effervescing Elephant
Ciao
Listed on Ciao since
25/03/2005
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